JERRIE CLEARS HAROLD.
The next day two items of news went like wildfire through the little
town of Shannondale--the first, set afloat by Peterkin and helped on by
Mrs. Tracy, that Harold had run away from public opinion, which was fast
turning against him since he could not explain where he found the
diamonds; and the second, that both Maude Tracy and Jerrie Crawford were
at the point of death, which made Harold's sudden departure all the more
heinous in the eyes of his enemies; for what but conscious guilt could
have prompted him to leave his sister, who, it was said, was calling for
him with every breath, and charging him with having taken the diamonds?
Now, this was false; for although Jerrie's fever had increased rapidly
during the night, and her babbling was something terrible to hear, there
was in it no accusation of Harold, although she was constantly talking
to him, and asking for the diamonds and the bag.
'It is a pity he ever told her about them,' the doctor said, as twice
each day, morning and night, for four successive days, he came and
looked upon her fever-stained cheeks, and counted her rapid pulse, and
took her temperature, and listened to her strange talk; and then, with a
shake of his head, drove over to Tracy Park and stood by poor little
Maude's couch, and looked into her death-white face, and counted her
faint heartbeats, and tried in vain to find some word of encouragement
for the stricken man, who looked about as much like death as the young
girl so dear to him. And every morning, on his way from the cottage to
Tracy Park, the doctor saw under the pines two young men, Tom and Dick,
seated upon the iron bench each whittling a bit of pine, which one was
unconsciously fashioning into a cross and the other into a grave-stone.
Tom had found Dick there working at his cross, and, after a simple
good-morning, had sat down beside him and whittled in silence upon
another bit of wood until the doctor appeared on his way to Tracy Park.
Then the whittling ceased, and both young men arose, and, going forward,
asked how Jerrie was.
'Pretty bad. Hal oughtn't to have gone, though I told him there was no
danger. We must telegraph if she gets worse,' was the reply, as the
doctor rode on.
Tom and Dick separated, and saw no more of each other until the next
morning, when they went again, and whittled in silence under the pines
until the doctor came in sight, when the same questions were asked and
answered as on the previous day.
Billy never joined them, but sat under the butternut tree where Jerrie
had refused him, for hours and hours watching the sluggish river, and
wondering what the world would be to him if Jerrie were not in it. Had
Billy been with Tom and Dick, he could not have whittled as they did,
for all the nerve power had left his hands, which lay helplessly in his
lap, and when he walked he looked more like a withered old man than a
young one of twenty-seven.
Maude was the first to rally--her first question for Harold, her second
for Jerrie--and her father, who was with her, answered truthfully that
Harold had not returned, and that Jerrie was sick and could not come to
her. He did not say how sick, and Maude felt no alarm, but waited
patiently until Jerrie should appear. For Maude, on her brass bedstead
with its silken hangings, and every possible luxury around her, there
were hired nurses and a mother's care, with many kind inquiries, while
it would seem as if every hand in town was stretched out to Jerrie, who
was a general favorite. Flowers and fruit and delicacies of every kind
were sent to the cottage, carriage after carriage stopped before the
door, offer after offer of assistance was made to Mrs. Crawford, while
Nina and Marian Raymond were there constantly; and Billy went to
Springfield for a chair in which to wheel his sister to the cottage, for
she could not yet mount into the dog-cart; and Tom and Dick whittled on
until the cross and the grave-stone were finished, and, with a sickly
smile, Tom said to Dick:
'Would you cut Jerrie's name upon it?'
'No; oh, no!' Dick answered, with a gasp. 'She may be better to-morrow.'
When, after a few days, the crisis was past, and Jerrie's strong
constitution triumphed over the disease which had grappled with it, the
whole town wore a holiday air as the people said to each other gladly:
'Jerrie is better; Jerrie will live!'
Her recovery was rapid, and within a week after the fever left her and
she awoke to perfect consciousness, she was able to sit up a part of
every day, and had walked across the floor and read a letter from Harold
to his grandmother, full of solicitude for herself and enthusiasm for
his trip over the wild mountains and across the vast plains to the
lovely little city of Tacoma, built upon a cliff and looking seaward
over the sound.
'Dear Harold,' Jerrie whispered. 'I shall be so glad when he comes home.
Nothing can be done till then, and I am so bewildered when I try to
think.'
In her weak state, everything seemed unreal to Jerrie, except the fact
that she had found her mother--and such a mother!--and many times each
day she thanked her God who had brought her this unspeakable joy, and
asked that she might do right when the time came to act. She knew the
bag was safe, for she had climbed to the top shelf and found it just
where she had put it. But where were the diamonds? Had Harold taken them
with him? Had he told any one? Did his grandmother know anything about
them? she wondered. She tried in many ways to draw Mrs. Crawford out,
but was unsuccessful, for there were now too much pain and bitterness
connected with the diamonds for Mrs. Crawford to speak to her of them.
The poisonous breath of gossip had been at work ever since Harold went
away, quietly aided and abetted by Mrs. Tracy, who never failed to roll
her eyes and shrug her shoulders when Harold's name was mentioned, and
openly pushed on by Peterkin, until Tom Tracy went to him one day and
threatened to have him tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail, if he
ever breathed Harold's name again in connection with the diamonds.
'Wall, I swow!' was all Peterkin said, as he put an enormous quid of
tobacco in his mouth, and walked away, thinking to himself, 'Twould take
an all-fired while to scrape them tar and feathers off of me, I'm so
big, and I b'lieve the feller meant it. Them high bucks wouldn't like no
better fun than to make a spectacle of me; so I guess I'll dry up a
spell.'
But the trouble did not stop with Peterkin's talk, for a neighboring
Sunday paper, which fed its readers with all the choicest bits of
gossip, came out with an article headed 'The Tracy Diamonds,' and after
narrating the story in the most garbled and sensational manner, went on
to comment upon the young man's having run away, rather than face public
opinion, and to comment upon the law which could not touch him because
the offence was committed so long ago.
One after another, and without either knowing that the other had done
so, Tom, and Dick, and Billy, waited upon the editor of the Sunday
_News_, threatening to sue him for libel if he did not retract every
word of the offensive article in his next issue, which he did. But the
mischief was done, and the paper found its way at last to Jerrie, sent
unwittingly by Ann Eliza, who covered it over a basket of fruit and
flowers which was carried one afternoon to the cottage.
Jerrie had been down stairs several times, but was in her room when the
basket was brought to her. Raising the paper, she was about to throw it
on the floor, when her eye caught the words, 'The Tracy Diamonds,' and
with bloodless lips and wildly beating heart she read the article
through, understanding the situation perfectly, and resolving at once
how to act. It seemed to her that she was lifted above and out of
herself, she felt so strong, and light, and well, as she threw on her
bonnet and shawl, and taking the leather bag in her hand, hurried down
stairs in quest of Mrs. Crawford.
'Grandma!' she exclaimed, 'why haven't you told me about Harold, and the
suspicion resting on him, and why did you let him go until I was better,
and what are the people saying? Tell me everything.'
Jerrie would not be put off, and Mrs. Crawford told her everything she
knew, and that she herself had added to the mystery by the strange
things she had said in her delirium about the diamonds, which she
insisted were hers.
'And they are mine!' Jerrie said, while Mrs. Crawford looked at her in
alarm, for her madness had returned.
'Where are you going?' she gasped, as Jerrie turned toward the door.
'To Tracy Park, to claim my own and clear Harold!' was the reply. 'When
I come back I will tell you all, but now I cannot wait.'
'But, Jerrie, you are not strong enough to walk there, and besides they
have company this afternoon, some kind of a new-fangled card party, and
you must not go,' Mrs. Crawford said.
'I have the strength of twenty horses,' Jerrie said, 'and if they have
company, so much the better, for there will be more to hear my story.
Good-bye.'
She was off like an arrow, and went almost upon a run through the leafy
woods until the house was reached, and then she stopped a moment to take
breath and look about her. How very fair and beautiful it was, that home
of the Tracys, and Jerrie's heart beat so hard that she felt for a
moment as if she were choking to death as she sat under a maple tree and
tried to think it all over, to make sure there was no mistake. Opening
the box she took out two documents, and read them again as she had the
night she was taken sick. One was a certificate of marriage, the other
of a birth and baptism; there was no mistake.
Holding the papers in one hand and the bag in the other, she went on to
the house, from which shouts of laughter were issuing, Nina's voice, and
Marian's, and Tom's, and Dick's, and Mrs. Tracy's. Jerrie shuddered a
little when she heard that, for it brought back to her mind all the
slights she had received from that woman who was so cruel to Harold, and
the pity which had been springing up in her heart ever since she looked
up at the windows of Maude's room and thought of the white-faced girl
lying there, died out, and it was more a Nemesis than a gentle,
forgiving woman who walked boldly into the hall and entered unbidden at
the drawing-room door.
Mrs. Tracy was having a progressive euchre party that afternoon. A
friend in Boston had written her about it, and, proud to be the first to
introduce it in Shannondale, she stood, flushed and triumphant, with the
restored diamonds in her ears and at her throat, laughing merrily with
the others at Judge St. Claire, who had won the booby prize--a little
drum, as something he could beat--and who, with a perplexed look in his
face, was staring at the thing as if he did not quite get the joke.
Apart from the rest, Frank Tracy sat looking on, though with no apparent
interest in the matter. He had joined in the game because his wife told
him he must, and had borne meekly her sarcastic remarks when he trumped
her ace and ordered up on nothing. His thoughts were not with the cards,
but up stairs with Maude, who seemed to be much better, and for whom
there was constantly a prayer in his heart.
'Spare her, and I will make reparation; I will tell the truth.'
He was trying to bribe the Lord to hear him, and there was some such
thought in his mind when he saw Jerrie in the door--tall, thin, and
white from her recent sickness, with eyes which rolled, and shone, and
flashed as Arthur's did sometimes, and falling at last upon Mrs. Tracy,
where they rested with an intensity which must have drawn that lady's
notice to her, if Frank had not exclaimed, as he rose to his feet:
'Jerrie! How did you get here?'
Then all turned and looked at her, and crowded around her with
exclamations of surprise and inquiries as to how she got there.
For a moment Jerrie stood like one in a catalepsy, with no power to move
or speak, but when Mrs. Tracy came forward, and in her iciest tones said
to her: 'Good-afternoon, Miss Crawford. To what am I indebted for this
unexpected pleasure?' her faculties came back, her tongue was loosened,
and she replied in a clear voice, which rang through the room like a
bell, and was, indeed, the knell to all the lady's greatness:
'I am here to claim my own, and to clear Harold from the foul suspicion
heaped upon him--by whom, at first, I do not know, but it was helped on
by you. I have seen the paper, have heard the whole from grandma, and am
here to defend him. It was I who gave him the diamonds! It was for me he
kept silent, and let you think what you would.'
'You gave him the diamonds?' Mrs. Tracy repeated, as one by one all the
members of the party, even the judge and Tom, gathered close to her in
their astonishment. 'You gave him the diamonds! You! and have come to
confess yourself a--'
She never finished the sentence, for something in Jerrie's face
frightened her, while her husband, who had come forward, laid his hand
warningly upon her arm.
So absorbed were they all that no one saw the little white-robed girl,
who, they supposed, was lying up stairs in her room, but who at the
sound of Jerrie's voice had, in her eagerness to see her, crept down the
stairs, and now stood in the door-way opposite to Jerrie, her large,
bright eyes looking in wonder upon the scene, and her ears listening
intently to what was as new to her as it had been to Jerrie an hour ago.
'Don't give me the name you have more than once given to Harold,' Jerrie
said, as with a gesture she silenced Mrs. Tracy. 'The diamonds are mine,
not yours. Can one steal his own?'
'Yours! Your diamonds! What do you mean?' Mrs. Tracy asked.
'They were my mother's,' Jerrie replied, 'and she sent them to me.'
They all thought her crazy except Frank, to whom there had come a horrid
presentiment of the truth, and who had clutched hard his wife's arm as
she said questioningly, in a mocking, aggravating tone:
'And your mother was--?'
Then Jerrie stepped into the room, and stood in their midst like a queen
among her subjects as she answered:
'My mother was Marguerite Heinrich, of Wiesbaden, better known to you as
Gretchen; and my father is Arthur Tracy, and I am their lawful child. It
is so written here,' and she held up the papers and the bag; 'I am
Jerrie Tracy!'